The Social Breach of Contract

The social contract is a concept that symbolizes the agreement between the individual and the collective. It protects the rights of the individual and the outlines the duties each individual must accept in order to gain the benefits of the collective. In a sense, this is a case of risk management on a very high level, wherein each individual who opts in gains a way to normalize risk through the law of large numbers. The concept of the social contract comes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and is Rousseau’s idea on how to best form a community in lieu of the problems he identified in his discourse on inequality. One of the fundamental principles within the theory is that force does not create right, and humans are only obliged to submit to legitimate powers. Therefore, a human has no duty to submit to coercion.

Furthermore, it makes no sense for a human to voluntarily submit to slavery, therefore to accept a rule in which they accept a lesser amount of rights or higher amount of duties than others makes little sense. Thus, as individuals gather intro steadily larger tribes, unless their rights and duties are equal and identical, one group or multiple groups will be enslaving the other(s).

In exchange for each member of his tribe or group pledging to protect his rights, he also pledges to protect theirs, thus he gains protection and he gains duties. This forms the basis for most of the Western democracies that we have today. Many countries have such principles outlined within their constitutions, drawing limits for both individual rights and behaviors, along with the rights and behaviors of the collective.

However, as with most deals that are struck, this has tended to somewhat breach against the original terms over time, wherein the collective Leviathan of the state slowly take away the rights of their population, while seeking more rights for itself. This is merely a function of incentive theory, that leads the individuals chosen to represent the people to act in their own best short-term interest, at the expense of the population.

For instance, within European “Social Democracies” the immigration policy has been utilized as a way to secure voters for social democratic parties. No voter who is dependent on the state will vote to reduce the benefits they derive from it, thus, they will vote for the parties that promise them the largest paycheck from the collective. Therefore, by encouraging an immigration policy that leads to many new people dependent on the state, has the effect of increasing state power. However, doing so is also ensuring that those who form the backbone of your society are slowly deriving benefit from it on a declining scale.

As benefits decline, it follows that the difference between contribution and withdrawal becomes skewed, and thus the logic of contribution becomes less sound. This stems from the fact that a state may only exist through two means, bribery or threat. In the case of bribery, the men who make up the state agree to sublimate some of their baser urges and tendencies in exchange for benefits that they derive from belonging to the group. In the case of threats, they agree to do so under threat of punishment.

To draw a parallel to raising children, you may bribe your child to get good grades by offering rewards when the child reaches a certain level of achievement. You may also threaten the child with a punishment should they fail to reach a certain level of achievement. These are in embryo similar from the perspective of operant conditioning, however the latter tends to garner much more resentment.

Furthermore, as groups form within the group, those seeking to become representatives will often pander to some groups to the detriment of others. Some focus on business interests, some on the interests of women, minorities, or alternatively on “workers“, in the process promising to increase the benefits derived from the social contract of their base, by taking from one group to bribe another. This is summed up by H.L Mencken quite concisely and incisively in the following quote:

“The state — or, to make matters more concrete, the government — consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting ‘A’ to satisfy ‘B’. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods.”

Machiavelli in his treatise “The Prince“ outlined that a prince when faced with the choice between being loved or feared, should elect to be feared. However, within the modern democracies the ability to maintain an aura of fear, yet still be re-elected appears to be impossible. Thus, the modern Princes and Princesses compete to be loved, with the inevitable downside that Machiavelli outlines:

“It is much safer to be feared than loved because …love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”

In order to be elected they make promises to the voters, that are inevitably broken when it is expedient to do so, when face with the choice between self-interest or collective interest most love themselves the most. When faced with the unpopular decision that is required for the long term survival of the social contract, and thus the state, the choice to make the popular, yet destructive choice is therefore their chosen option.

As people over time steadily seek to eliminate risk to themselves and push this risk over to the collective, thus reducing the volatility of outcome, the state will step in to take control of the business cycle, seeking to limit volatility. However, fortunes are made from

Thus, we arrive at the present moment, where the modern Western Democracies are facing the challenge of no option but to make the unpopular and “heartless” decisions required for the long-term prosperity of the social contract.

One cannot expect for the horse to continue to carry the majority of the burden for countries, only to feed the pigs.

Evaluating The Tax Gap

The Gender Pay Gap gets much attention, despite it being both a misnomer and often a source of much shoddy scholarly work. I found a paper from New Zealand, that evaluates the distribution of income and fiscal incidence by age and gender. The purpose of the paper as explained by the authors in the introduction is:

This paper contributes to the literature on fiscal incidence by examining the age and gender dimension of redistribution through taxation and government spending in New Zealand. [1]

New Zealand for those who are unfamiliar with the country, is a modern democratic nation in by the Western model. It is ranked the 9th best country to live in [2] and is the 9th most gender equal country in the world. Females have a 62% labor participation rate [3] compared to the male rate of 73.8%, which is the highest female participation in the top 10. By most measures a great country to live in, and one rapidly approaching gender equality.

The first two stats that jumped out at me was the income inequality and the labor force participation rate statistics:

As the authors of the study themselves point out, some of the income discrepancy is explained by the lower labor force participation. However, as a mixed market economy, there is a distinct difference between income earned through labor, and disposable income. New Zealand, as does many other similar countries in Western Europe, engage in income redistribution through the tax system. Meaning that those who earn more are taxed at a higher rate, and this income is then distributed to those who earn less. Such redistribution mechanisms are among others, pensions, housing subsidies, tax credits and unemployment benefits.

When we take a look at the direct tax per age group and gender for the New Zealand statistics the following graph is the result:

From the graph we see that the line for direct tax closely resembles that for market income both across gender and across age group. Without going too much into the why of the two graphs, it is clear that men both earn much more of the income and pay much more of the taxes.

The authors of the study also points out, that hours worked is likely a factor. As is time off with children, electing to prioritize family over career and other factors.

The average hourly pay rate for the group between 15 – 64, was $23,69 for women and $28.21 for men. This is a difference of 16% in favor of men. Furthermore, the average hours worked per week among men were 37,2 and for women it was 28,9. Meaning that in an average week the male wage earner will earn a pre-tax income of $1049, and the woman $685. An earnings gap of 35%. A woman who worked the same amount of hours as a male would reduce this gap to 16% as the only differentiating factor was average hourly wage.

This does not take into account entry into the labor force, individual factors such as negotiations, sectors they work within, as this is a pure “all money earned by women/all women” type calculation, thus labor force participation is a factor. This is classic of positivism as it only seeks to establish what is, not why or how.

From these graphs in unison, we can see that men do earn more market income, yet they also pay much more in taxes. Between men and women there is a direct tax paid gap where women pay 40 – 50% less tax than men overall. This ranges from a tax gap of only 19% in the 65 – 69 bracket, to a tax gap of 57% in the 30 – 35 bracket. To point out, the gap between male hourly earnings and female hourly earnings was 16%. The authors actually point out that the sharp increase in taxes paid by women in the 65 – 69 year old group, is due to eligibility to receive pensions from the state, which represents an increase in their income.

There is also an interesting drop in direct tax paid by women in the 40 – 44 age bracket, that the authors of the study point to as being associated with a reduction in taxable welfare benefits for the age group. Most likely due to a decrease in family benefits after child rearing ages. These income benefits derived from the state’s redistribution policies, favor women, with there being a 23% lifetime income support gap. That peaks at age 25 – 29, where women receive 67% more income support than men, and is the smallest at age 70 – 74, where men and women receive equal amounts.

This results in the gap being reduced from an 89% gap in market income between men and women, to a 43% gap in disposable income between men and women, and this is just the first round of redistribution. The authors then start to take into account the effect of being in a couple, which translates into shared resources. Furthermore, it does not take into account the effects of publicly provided goods and services, or indirect taxation such as sales taxes. When these factors are taken into account, the gap drops to 35% for final income.

The percentage difference in the three types of income per age bracket can be seen below along with the graph showing the net fiscal impact per capita by gender and age group for 2010:

What this demonstrates is that men “break even” for society when they reach roughly 24 years of age, whereas women do not break even until they are in their mid 40s. The authors attribute this to a combination of lower workforce participation, higher health and education spending, higher income support and lower indirect and direct taxation. The results of this is that a profile can be produced for each gender that demonstrates cumulative net fiscal impact per capita by gender and age group:

From the above profile we can see that where as men start to “correct” at age 20 – 24, and arrive in the black for society around 35, women never produce positive income for society. The positive net fiscal impact made by women ages 45 – 59 is simply not enough to outweigh the negative impact they have had on the collective bank account for the preceding 45 years, and retirement age quickly approaches, and women add more negatives to an already negative profile.

Summary and Conclusions

The point of this article is not to attack anyone, but it is to highlight that the value of membership in a group, is dependent on the benefits you derive from membership and the cost of the membership. In the scenario above from New Zealand for instance, it is clear that speaking purely in terms of finances, the women of the country are deriving a greater benefit from belonging to the group than the men. The men are accepting more duties, the women derive more benefits, and to borrow Rousseau’s definition, the men are slaves. This is not to say that a small group of men are gaining enormous benefits from being a part of the group, this would include those top earners, the top wealth owners and such, however these do not make up a great majority. On the same note, there are probably women who follow a pattern similar to that of men in figure 17, but this is likewise not a great majority.

The question in such a situation is therefore, how long an inequitable contract can remain without there being a drive for amending or restoring the original balance struck between duties and privileges. In a civilization where women are in the situation where they have the fewest duties, and the most rights, the men are hardly being offered an equitable situation.

Perhaps the most important point from a red pill perspective, is that regardless of whether you elect to get married or not, even if you go hardline MGTOW, women through the use of feminism as their battle strategy have ensured that they have a way to vacuum your wallet, and use your labor to their benefit.

A note:

I recently launched a Patreon page where I will be posting additional content every month for those who support me and I will do a Google Hangout for the highest tier Patrons (limited to 10 people).

I’ve also had some requests for consults, which I’ve declined up until now, but due to demand I’ve chosen to open up for doing some consults on request. For details please check out my Consulting and Patreon Page

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